Stop Spaces from Rearranging Themselves in Mac OS X

The Mac OS X 10.7.2 update brought with it an unusual change to Mission Control’s behavior, where desktops/spaces will automatically rearrange themselves based on how recently they’ve been used or accessed. If you’ve set your spaces to be in a specific order, this is fairly annoying, but it’s also easy to stop.

Launch “System Preferences” and click on Mission Control

Uncheck the box next to “Automatically rearrange spaces based on most recent use”

Close out System Preferences

With the automatic rearrangement disabled, Mission Control will again remember your app and desktops placement and not reorder them on it’s own.

If only Lion didn’t insist on creating a space when an application goes full screen. This is especially a problem when using Aperture, perhaps others, when you have the application assigned to a specific space. In my standard set-up Aperture is in space 3 and ctl-3 on the keyboard will bring me to Aperture… unless it’s in full screen mode in which Lion puts it on a freshly created space.

If that isn’t bad enough the full screen entry and exit animation is excruciatingly slow. And there are some bugs. When the application pops up a HUD (Heads Up Display window) in full screen mode every once in a while the HUD shows up on the assigned space, not the space the application is currently using in full screen mode.